'I gave the instructions for Wahid's killing'

I will return to India and face trial but only after I have completed my task of teaching Dawood a lesson, says Chhota Rajan in an exclusive interview with Special Correspondent Harinder Baweja in Kuala Lumpur.

Rajendra Sadashiv Nikhalje alias Chhota Rajan, 37, is no alien name to Bombay's underworld. Nor any less infamous than his former boss Dawood Ibrahim. But unlike his more notorious mentor, who has maintained a high profile through the media, Chhota Rajan remained in the shadows, functioning mostly from Dubai as one of Dawood's key lieutenants.

But after serious differences with Dawood cropped up in 1992, eventually leading to a break-up after the Bombay bomb blasts, Chhota Rajan has been busy building his own empire, and is said to have made a fortune after muscling into Bombay's lucrative narcotics-export business. The gangster, however, denies any link with the drugs trade.

Though operating from South-East Asia now, Chhota Rajan is making a determined bid for leadership of the Bombay underworld. It was the sensational murder of Thakiyudeen Wahid, the East West Airlines' managing director, last November that put the national spotlight on Dawood's former lieutenant since the police believed he had ordered the killing.

The murder of Wahid, whose airline is alleged to be linked to Dawood, was one among a series that have jolted Bombay in a fresh wave of inter-gang warfare, this time with Chhota Rajan in alliance with Arun Gawli challenging Dawood. Image is as important as muscle in the underworld and a weekly queered the pitch for Chhota Rajan's new-found national notoriety by publishing an interview with an unidentified Dawood "aide" who claimed that it could also be their handiwork.

A threat to kill Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray was also made in the same interview. Now Chhota Rajan has decided to speak up, for the first time at such length, to make the chilling statement that he ordered Wahid's killing. This was what the Bombay Police believed all along anyway, something which they say was confirmed last fortnight when they arrested suspect Joseph John D'Souza. Chhota Rajan too claims that D'Souza is a member of his gang.

Chhota Rajan: from cinema-ticket tout to kingpin, he has come a long way

The timing of the bloody campaign launched by the Chhota Rajan and Gawli gangs to break Dawood's decade-long stranglehold over the city's crime syndicates couldn't be better. Ever since the serial bomb blasts that rocked the city in March 1993, Bombay's criminal fraternity has been divided more than ever, with Dawood for the first time being seen as a 'Muslim' don.

And since the blasts were also directed against the Shiv Sena, Chhota Rajan and Gawli are perhaps banking on the implicit support of the pro-Hindu Sena-BJP Government in Maharashtra to further their cause. Chhota Rajan even offers his "services" to the Sena and vows to protect Thackeray.

Just as Dawood benefited in the '80s from selective police action which helped destroy his rivals, in the '90s Chhota Rajan and Gawli can make the most of the fact that Dawood, after being implicated in the bomb blast conspiracy, is already weakened. Dawood, of course, denies he organised the bomb blasts, but the police action since March 1993 has seen most of his henchmen either in jail, in hiding or being systematically killed in police 'encounters'.

Yet there is no certainty that Chhota Rajan will succeed in dethroning his former boss. As a close associate of his observes, "Unlike Haji Mastaan or Dawood, Chhota Rajan doesn't have a really good sense of strategy. He tends to be impulsive and that's very dangerous in this business."

Chhota Rajan was born in a lower-middle-class Dalit family living in the Tilak Nagar housing board colony in Bombay's eastern suburb of Chembur. In the '70s, when he was in his teens, Bombay was effectively carved up between the three major under world syndicates of that time, led by Haji Mastaan, Karim Lala and Vardarajan Mudaliar.

The construction boom of the '70s provided plenty of opportunity for running protection rackets and extorting money from builders and big traders in the area. Chembur and Ghatkopar were under the control of one of Vardarajan's lieutenants, Rajan Nair, a former factory worker. Nikhalje drifted into petty crime and was soon black marketing cinema tickets for the gang of 'Bada Rajan', as Nair was known.

"I will kill Dawood whatever the cost. Even if I have to pay with my life."

Once Bada Rajan made his way into Vardarajan's gold-smuggling operation, the 'routine' trades in the area were passed to Nikhalje, who now came to be known as 'Chhota Rajan'. By the early '80s Chhota Rajan had diversified into contract killing, a 'trade' that would take him far in his criminal career.

A round the same time a police crack-down virtually finished off Vardarajan, and with Mastaan and Karim Lala on the decline, the Konkani Muslim gang led by Dawood emerged and was immediately locked in fierce combat with the Pathan gang led by younger associates of Karim Lala. By now Bada Rajan had come into his own and it was to him and his young accomplice that Dawood turned for help. Chhota Rajan played a prominent role in wiping out the Pathans, and following Bada Rajan's violent death in September 1983, his alliance with Dawood was cemented.

The two finally parted ways a decade later in 1993. Differences had crept in a year earlier when Subhash Thakur, another Dawood aide, allegedly lured and killed three of Chhota Rajan's close friends. Finally, after Dawood's name was included in the charge-sheet filed by the CBI following the serial bomb blasts, Chhota Rajan decided to take on his own boss.

Fleeing Dubai for the safer environs of South-East Asia, he made Kuala Lumpur his base until two months ago when the rivalry between him and Dawood saw Bombay's streets turn into a bloody killing field. Souring of relations between the two, in fact, marked a new chapter in the internecine wars that have ravaged Bombay's underworld.

In a bid to challenge Dawood, Chhota Rajan is also expanding operations in Bombay in both the eastern and western suburbs. His narcotics business reportedly also subsidises the Gawli gang and this, put together with land and protection rackets, sees Chhota Rajan end up with as much as Rs 200 crore a year, or so the police estimate.

Money apart, it is vengeance that seems to be driving Chhota Rajan today. The police admit that Dawood has suffered set backs in the recent past with the killings of narcotics smuggler Piloo Khan, his chief hitman Sunil Sawant, who was shot dead on the streets of Dubai, and now Wahid - all confessedly masterminded by Chhota Rajan.

Dawood, left, and Chhota Rajan: once allies they are now out for revenge

But Dawood too has hit back by killing both Mangesh Pawar, the man who is said to have carried out the attack on Piloo Khan, and builder Om Prakash Kukreja, believed to have been Chhota Rajan's financier in Bombay.

Rivalry apart, Chhota Rajan also reite rates accused Dawood hitman Babloo Srivastava's charge that controversial godman Chandra swami came to Dubai to meet Dawood. A charge that the godman has denied even while being grilled by the Jain Commission, but one that will stir the hornet's nest again, for unlike Babloo who was not party to the meeting, Chhota Rajan claims that he received the godman at the airport and met him several times later along with Dawood before the two flew to America together to meet Adnan Khashoggi.

Chandraswami, though contacted several times, did not come forth with his views. Nor did the Dewan brothers - the Bombay-based builders who are alleged to be friends of Dawood - who, Chhota Rajan claims, were instrumental in arranging the meeting between the don and the godman. A relative of the Dewans when contacted said that the brothers were abroad and there was no for warding address or telephone number.

A proclaimed offender who went underground after jumping bail in a murder case in 1983, Chhota Rajan is now in hiding, often shifting his place of residence to avoid not just Dawood but also the Interpol, which in September last year issued a red corner alert for him. "I will return to India and face trial but only after I have completed my task of teaching Dawood a lesson," he says in an exclusive interview with Special Correspondent Harinder Baweja in Kuala Lumpur. Excerpts:

Q.Why did you leave Dawood?A. He is not a man worth talking about. He betrayed both me and the nation. He got three of my men killed to try and reduce my power. He killed them in the worst possible fashion - by befriending them first, inviting them over and dining them. He thinks he reduced my power and strength, but three people are not going to make a difference when there are a thousand others with me. It was the manner in which he did things that smacks of betrayal.

Q. And why do you say he betrayed the nation?A. He was the brain behind the Bombay bomb blasts in which hundreds of innocents lost their lives.

"Dawood was behind the Bombay bomb blasts which killed hundreds of innocents."

Q. You are making a very serious charge. How do you know that he was involved in the blasts?A. Because at that time (March 1993) I was in Dubai and Dawood was in Karachi. He returned two-three days after the blast and was inundated with calls congratulating him. I asked him about his involvement and, of course, he denied it. You see, by March we were in any case falling out with each other. Differences had crept in after the killing of my three associates and I was not part of the many closed-door meetings in which Tiger Memon and Dawood were together. There was also talk of landings in my presence.

Q. Why were you not part of the conspiracy?A. I was not in the inner circle any more and if I had any idea, I would not have allowed it to happen. Perhaps Dawood suspected that.

Q. How could you have prevented the blasts, said to have been planned with the help and support of Pakistan? It wasn't a one-man operation.A. I would have told the department or contacted someone in the Indian Government. I would also have put my own men on the job.

Q. How did you finally leave the gang and escape from Dubai? They must have been keeping an eye on you.A. Not just that. My passport had gone to the Indian Embassy for renewal and I never got it back.

Q. But didn't you have a receipt?A. I had a receipt-in fact, I still have it, but Dawood told me that the embassy had instructions not to renew my passport. The truth, however, is that he got it renewed but never gave it back to me. Along with mine, he had given his brother Noora's passport which came back renewed. It was his way of pressurising me. Any way, it may be news to him, but I still have an Indian passport issued in Dubai.

Q. How could he get it renewed? You mean he had contacts even in the Indian Embassy?A. Yes, money means a lot in this business and can buy you anything.

Tiger Memon, left, with Dawood: the two held many closed-door meetings

Q. So how did you leave Dubai? A. I got my self another passport. But don't ask me how because I will not spell it out.

Q. You finally parted company after the blasts and have now become his opponent. The Bombay Police believe that your gang is behind the killing of Thakiyudeen Wahid, the managing director of East West Airlines.A. I gave the instructions for Wahid's killing. He was Dawood's financier in India. I got him killed because I want to take revenge on Dawood for the bomb blasts. Before that, Sunil Sawant, another very close associate of Dawood, was bumped off on the streets of Dubai. I want to eliminate all the people who have let down the country by conspiring to blow up Bombay.

Q. But Dubai is supposed to be Dawood's headquarters. He has been cont rolling the Bombay underworld from there for so many years.A. Dawood is only a media don and he has been in Pakistan for over two years now, not having the guts to go back to Dubai. I have my contacts and resources and have proved that I can get at him, even if it means planning an operation in Dubai. Sawant was Dawood's main hitman and we got him despite all his security guards. Now I am looking for Dawood.

Q. But you say he is in Pakistan... A. So what? I know where he is and we have already made one attempt on his life in Karachi. There are smugglers in Pakistan who are opposed to him because he is stepping on their turf. He might think that Pakistan is safe because it is an Islamic country, but there are people there who want him as badly as I do. I will not rest till I finish him off. He is my nation's enemy and has to be taught a lesson.

Q. How are you any different? After all, you are also working against the nation.A. I have never harmed the nation. My fight is against Dawood.

Q. But you are also a killer, a criminal...A. I am killing Dawood's men. In fact, I am making the police's job easier and am doing the country a good turn by getting rid of those who conspired to de-stabilise it.

"I received Chandraswami at Dubai airport when he came to meet Dawood."

Q. It seems odd that you should go on about the country when you admit that you will continue to indulge in killings. What about Wahid's killing?A. I gave the instructions for Wahid's murder. He was Dawood's financier in India. East West Airlines is, in fact, owned by Dawood. Wahid used to come to Dubai - where I also met him - often and Dawood told me that he was starting an airline. It was important to kill Wahid for that was another way of reducing Dawood's power.

Q. So you killed Wahid to avenge the killing of Kukreja, who was supposed to be your financier.A. He was not my financier. These are only filmi stories. I have never met Om Prakash Kukreja in my life. His brother Mohan was a friend of mine and I used to speak to him occasionally on the phone.

Q. The Bombay Police has announced an award of Rs 2 lakh for anyone who provides information on Wahid's killers. Why don't you claim the award?A. I don't want that money. It is compensation enough that the operation was successful. There can be no greater satisfaction than that.

Q. A part from killings, what are your other activities? The police believe that you smuggle narcotics.A. I have never touched drugs in my life. I don't believe in earning money through spoiling people's lives and hurting them.

Q. You have hurt Wahid's family.A. What about the hundreds who were killed in the blasts and what about their families? They were truly innocent. Wahid should never have involved himself with Dawood.

Q. You were also very close to him till only two years ago...A. Yes, and that is the only regret I have. Not that I am part of the underworld but that I associated with a man like Dawood.

Q. Are you sure he is in Karachi?A. Yes. Initially, just before I left Dubai, I had his telephone number there and even called him to see if I had been given the correct number. That number has obviously changed but I know from my sources that he is still there. The number, in fact, was given to me by Sawant. I called him once to wish him on his birthday (December 26). He does travel out of Pakistan once in a while but Karachi is his base. Gone are the days when celebrities used to seek his company. When even saints like Chandraswami wanted to meet him.

Q. Chandraswami has gone on oath before the Jain Commission saying that he has never met Dawood.A. That is the biggest lie I have heard. I was very much part of the Dawood circle in late 1989-early 1990 when Chandraswami came to Dubai. I was the one who went to pick him up at the airport. He stayed in Dubai for three to four days at Chhota Shakeel's (a close aide of Dawood) house, where Dawood used to come and meet him.

Q. What happened in those meetings?A. I don't know because they used to sit alone in a separate room. Chandraswami used to play astrologer and he always maintained that he would predict the future but in private.

Q. Did he predict yours as well?A. Yes, he told me that I would have no problem with Dawood but that I would fall out with his brothers. Obviously that was all wrong.

Q. Your fight is not with Dawood's brothers?A. I have nothing against them so far and I know that Dawood didn't involve his brothers in the conspiracy. In any case, neither he nor I want to involve our families in the war. My brothers are happily staying in the village along with our mother.

Q. Why did Dawood and Chandraswami meet?A. I don't know the details but what I do know is that Dawood was keen on meeting Adnan Khashoggi. Dawood and Chandraswami flew to America from Dubai. I was also supposed to accompany them but I didn't get a visa.

Q. Did they return together as well?A. No, Dawood came back with a lot of photographs of the three of them together and I remember him criticising Chandraswami saying he is no godman, he only talks of projects and money.

"Dawood betrayed me and India. He killed three of my men to weaken me."

Q. Did Babloo Srivastava arrange the meeting between Dawood and Chandraswami?A. No. The meeting was arranged through Bipin and Sanju Dewan, Bombay-based friends of Dawood. Chandraswami flew to Dubai with Sanju, both of whom I received at the airport. All that, however, is in the past now, for even in Pakistan Dawood is not living freely. He is pretty much in hiding, but how long can these rats stay underground? I will teach them a lesson even if I have to pay with my life.

Q. You are involved in the property business in Bombay in a big way. According to estimates, you make several crores through contract killings, property business and protection money.A. Several crores a year, not in a day.

Q. What will you do with so much money?A. I need the money to weaken Dawood's gang.

Q. You can weaken him by surrendering and cooperating with the police...A. I don't trust the Government because a lot of them are mixed up. Dawood is capable of buying officials and turning them against me.

Q. You must be using the same tactics - building contacts in police and political circles.A. I don't believe in using money because the person who takes money from me can sell himself to anyone, Dawood included. Nor do I have any political godfathers. Yes, I am a supporter of the BJP and the Shiv Sena. One of Dawood's aides said recently that Bal Thackeray was number one on their hit list. All I want to say is that if necessary we will provide protection. No one can touch Thackeray saab. Dawood won't be doing his own Muslim brothers a favour by trying to touch Thackeray, for then all hell will break loose.

Q. So, you have approached the Shiv Sena.A. No, I have not. But they only have to give us a hint and we will be at their service.

Q. So it is true that there is some sort of a communal divide even in the underworld?A. Not in my mind. I still have a lot of Muslims working with me and I consider all Muslims my brothers. Dawood too has Hindus even in his inner circle, like Sharad Shetty and Anil Parab.

Chhota Rajan with Diwakar Churi (left), one of his three associates killed

Q. Why are you talking of religion and Hindu-Muslim amity? As far as the police is concerned, you are an underworld hitman who has jumped bail.A. All of us in the underworld are hitmen. And why can't I speak on behalf of my country? I am not interested in de-stabilising the country through blasts and provoking communal riots.

Q. So killings are okay if the aim is settling personal scores?A. I have been let down by Dawood. That doesn't hurt me as much as the blasts do. I will stop only after I have finished Dawood and Tiger Memon and I have set a target of a year for myself to accomplish that.

Q. How do you manage to remote control?A. It is the age of communication. The telephone is my weapon.

Q.Have you met Tiger Memon?A. Several times. He used to come to Dubai often to meet Dawood. He also came to attend my wedding in 1988. Dawood and Tiger have a long association. He was in Dubai even during the riots and before the blasts; Tiger and Dawood went to Karachi together where they stayed at Taufiq Jalliawala's house.

Q. Dawood has established and earned for himself the title of don. You talk very confidently of catching up with someone who was once your boss.A. I am very confident. It is you press people who have made a petty smuggler and criminal out to be a don. Today it is not his writ but mine which runs in Bombay. Dawood, in fact, is under pressure. His men are hiding in Bombay and if we can penetrate Dubai too, which was once his unchallenged domain, then what kind of a don is he? He is now only a fugitive who won't be able to run for too long. It is not me alone but Arun Gawli too, for we have joined hands and together are more powerful even in Bombay. All our actions and activities are coordinated, for we are now working together.

Q. You are also on the run. Are you scared of Dawood?A. I am not scared of him. In fact, I'm prepared to take him on face to face. If I am in hiding, it is only because I have an unfinished agenda. The day I get him, I will come back to India and surrender. You might think I am in hiding but as far as I am concerned, I am being practical. Why should I offer my self to them when I know that they must also be in search of me? After all they have managed to kill my friends and associates too.

Q. Subhash Thakur, one of Dawood's associates who is now in custody, has said that Dawood wanted him to eliminate you.A. That is true and I knew about it. They had, in fact, planned to throw me off a launch but I didn't go to that launch party. I kept a distance after three of my associates were killed and finally left Dubai in July 1993.

Q. How long will you continue to hide? Aren't you fed up with the kind of life you're leading? Running from the law is also an offence.A. I cannot surface as long as there is a threat to my life. I will return once my task is over and then I am willing to face trial and go to jail if necessary. But only after I have taught Dawood a lesson.

Q. Is your family prepared for this?A. After all they are also keen on returning to their country and living a normal life.

"I'll be at the Sena's service if needed. No one can touch Bal Thackeray."

Q. You've never thought of taking up a job?A. I was working with the German pharmaceutical firm Hoechst where my father also worked as a storekeeper. Later, because of the company I kept, I became involved with the underworld. It's been a long journey. From selling cinema tickets in black to travelling to South-East Asia.